


Like Sunshine After Rain

by Talik_Sanis



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste Needs Help, Angst, Bad Parent Gabriel Agreste, Roses, TV Special: Miraculous World: New York, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:15:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talik_Sanis/pseuds/Talik_Sanis
Summary: Adrien receives a rose from someone who he really hopes can learn to love him.Minor tangential spoilers for an early scene in the New York special.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug (one-sided)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 62





	Like Sunshine After Rain

**Author's Note:**

> “Love comforteth like sunshine after rain."

The photoshoot had run long this morning, a disaster as Vincent sought out the perfect angle of light to create the proper chiaroscuro that was demanded by this particular magazine spread. It had dragged to the point that the effervescent photographer had actually _stopped_ raving about spaghetti.

Adrien could only hope that he wasn't too late.

When he strode into his classroom, shoulders somehow held high and low at the same time in the deferentially proud way that had been drilled into him by his father and PR agents, who insisted that it reflected the proper aesthetic for the image that they were trying to cultivate, the clamor of his fellow students fell to a hush.

Marinette and Alya were huddled together conspiratorially, but the pigtailed girl offered him a too-wide and friendly grin and a wave, while Nino leaned back into his chair, throwing a salute from his cap.

The eyes of all the other students were on him.

“Sunshine,” Alya greeted, poking Marinette with an elbow. Only then did she stop waving. “It looks like your admirers are back. Pretty low-key this time, though.”

It was at that point, as he rounded into the room and let his bag slide to the floor before his desk, that he actually saw why Alix and Kim were on the verge of chortling and Nath sported a little blush, largely because he was flustered by almost anything. In the back, Lila sneered cheerfully, layer upon layer of lies.

A single rose sat on his desk.

Taking his seat, Adrien plucked it up and twisted it in his fingers, the rough flesh of the stem almost tingling under his fingertips while he brought it to his nose. The scent was attenuated, old. The flower had been sitting here for some time, though his sensitive nose allowed him to pick up a dozen subtle notes that weren't washed out by the press of human body odour – the simple smell of people that was actually comforting – and the perfumes and colognes that probably should have been banned by the school in case of allergic reactions.

Flowers had poured down on him in the first few weeks that he had attended school. Secret admirers had propositioned him by leaving red roses and love-notes on luxury stationery in his locker or at his desk, while the bolder ones had approached him directly with chocolates, roses, and even some Alstroemeria, which, though they were listed as his favorites in an interview, were just... fine. A bouquet of orchids was waiting for him in the men's changing room once, and he kind of appreciated that because it was novel and sweet rather than a little cliché.

Not that he didn't love a good romantic cliché. Chat Noir was nothing more than a blender cocktail of bumptiousness, machismo, anime tropes, and romantic clichés.

The flowers had started out flattering, but after the first dozen, they made him sick. Those poor girls, and several boys, had spent so much money on the tokens of their misplaced affection. At first, he had tried to track them all down and express his apologies while offering to pay them back, but it simply became too much to see the broken mirrors of their faces when he turned them down and told them that he wasn't looking for a relationship right now.

Mostly true. He had found one.

His affections were already stolen, directed with the manic obsession of a boy who _needed_ to love someone in his life but only knew how to feel for people who didn't reciprocate.

He loved his father, but his father tolerated him, and needed him for the company. That was enough.

He loved his mother, but his mother had left him.

He loved Ladybug, but she didn't trust him and didn't love him back.

After those initial “florid” days, when the newness wore off and he turned down enough fans, the flowers stopped. No one wanted to give flowers to him; they were to be laid on an alter to the idea of Adrien Agreste.

He was an idol, after all.

Adrien wasn't worth flowers.

"Hey, Mec, do you have any idea who might have left this for you? It was here when we all got in." There was a little vicious snarl to Nino's voice, like the light subharmonics that he arranged meticulously in his own music. He might not have been conscious of it, but Nino's ubiquitous jovial lilt oscillated with subtle shifts that one could grow to read. Adrien had a good ear for that.

Nino was worried about his “fans.” It was a justified concern. 

“Maybe it was just someone who wanted me to know that he or she cares.”

“You, uh-” He plucked the cap from his brow and smoothed a hand over the fuzz underneath. “You okay with being, uh, romanced? If it's a guy, I mean?”

Smooth. He hadn't actually thought about that, though Luka was ... really sweet, boundlessly supportive because his mother made him the adult in the family while, on the other side of the spectrum of ab-

While on the other hand, Gabriel infantilized him.

Maybe that was why he was such a petulant, overly-emotional child. He clutched the rose more tightly, pressed his thumb to an untrimmed thorn, and didn't wince when he bled.

“Maybe.” He hadn't expected how his heart would almost thrum while the fine edges of the flower, slightly waxy but smooth, deformed under the gentle strokes of his finger. A fleck of blood slicked one delicate petal. “But it's a yellow rose, Nino.”

“What difference does that make?”  
  
“A yellow rose means friendship.” There was no stutter in Marinette's voice, but she did sound a little sad.

“Well, Mec. You've got that in spades.” For a moment, it looked like Nino was going to slug him in the shoulder, before thinking better of it and settling for a squeeze.

“Yeah.”

When he got home that evening, Plagg still cuddled up inside his pocket, he flopped into his bed while cradling the yellow rose. _The Oxford Shakespeare Collection_ along with some parchment paper that he had picked up while returning from fencing practice would allow him to press and dry the flower, but he realized as he looked up at it, his distant white ceiling a blur above him as he focused on the petals, that he didn't want to any more.

Instead, he plucked a bottle of water from his mini fridge, not having any glasses or vases on hand and fearing to ask for one from Nathalie or his father because conversations always led to fights, even if they were cool and detached and thus worse than an explosion.

The first few sips cooled his throat and settled him as he breathed for a moment and then retrieved a pair of scissors from his computer desk to trim off the bottom of the stem and plop the dead rose into the bottle. Light refraction broke the stem; the sheen of the bottle distorted the thorns; but the flower looked, at least, as if it was blooming bright.

Returning to his bed, head propped up by his hands, he stared at the flower for lingering minutes, admiring the curves of its petals, the way they harmonized and slotted together into a perfectly intricate arrangement. Even dulled by age and death, even behind the omnipresent Camembert stench and air freshener he used to cover the stink of Plagg's addiction, the flower still smelled ... happy.

He liked getting flowers from people he wanted to love him, even though they didn't.

Maybe he'd leave himself another one.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I just finished watching the New York special, and, well, that scene wherein Chat suggests that he might just send a rose to himself takes on woefully unpleasant connotations when contrasted with Adrien's depression.


End file.
